


This is a loop, feedback loop

by alunsina



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Established Relationship, Groundhog Day, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Time Loop, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-21 17:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alunsina/pseuds/alunsina
Summary: Everyday, Chanyeol dies. But at least he gets to hold Kyungsoo's hand.





	This is a loop, feedback loop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anon_nim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anon_nim/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Descry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9769310) by [anon_nim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anon_nim/pseuds/anon_nim). 



> Cw: graphic death/s. Please mind the tags and the warnings.

_My point is, it’s the sound of self-destruction_ – Andrew Bird

 

 

It occurs to Chanyeol—as he gets blood on his favorite gray hoodie again, and wouldn’t that be fun to wash—that this has happened before.

 

**

 

He supposes it’s like living in a dream. Not the kind where you’re back in school again, half an hour late for your final exams, unprepared and suddenly missing pants. But the one where you arrive on time for your Monday coffee date, with actual pants on (thank you), and said date not disowning you on sight for wearing your favorite hoodie for a week straight. Kyungsoo has said about twenty different variations of please-wear-something-else by now, which is rich coming from a guy who has a single white shirt in the sea of black that is his wardrobe. Yet always, always, when the barista turns her back on them to prepare their drinks, Kyungsoo would reach up to playfully tug at Chanyeol’s earlobe, eyes crinkling in the corner as he smiles. It makes the entirety of Chanyeol’s body go warm from the top of his sensitive ears down to the tips of his toes; it makes him want to die from the overwhelming, luminous happiness of it all. 

So of course Chanyeol gets run over by a swerving car not a few hours later, leaving a messy smear of himself on the asphalt, and possibly scaring all pedestrians in the area.

Then he blinks—

It’s 6 am, on a gray and muggy Monday morning much like the last, his throat all scratchy as if he’s been swallowing gravel and sand the whole night. He just sent a text to Kyungsoo to meet him for coffee.

And the dream starts all over again.

 

**

 

“Hm?”

Kyungsoo is looking at him over his coffee mug, Chanyeol realizes, his face inscrutable.

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at my watch,” Kyungsoo says. Like someone waking from deep sleep Chanyeol becomes conscious of the particularities of this Monday: the permeating smell of roasted beans, warm amber glow of the overhead lights, the bustling noise behind the shop counter, and Kyungsoo’s wrist in between his hands. It’s half past ten in the morning. Precious little time left.

“Sorry.” Chanyeol grins. Because Kyungsoo hasn’t said anything about it he keeps his hands where they are, marveling at them, at the solidness of Kyungsoo’s wrist anchoring him. “I was thinking it’d be nice if we just stayed here all day.”

“You’d go crazy from boredom.”

“I’ve already gone crazy over you,” Chanyeol points out and watches—with the same fascination he reserves for sunrises and sunsets, everyday things that are no less magical and beautiful for it—the rising color up Kyungsoo’s neck, his mouth pursed as he barely manages to keep himself from spitting coffee down his script or at Chanyeol’s face. Kyungsoo settles for violently throwing a sugar packet at him instead.

“Since we’re already,“ Kyungsoo swallows down more coffee in lieu of the B word. Chanyeol’s tempted to tackle him because of how cute that is, only he still wants to be alive before the next swerving car, please. “Any day now you can quit with the sweet-talk,” Kyungsoo reminds him.

It’s Chanyeol’s favorite part of the day.

 

**

 

The other, less exciting parts of his day:

“Say, Jongdae and I were wondering, how’s it going? Are you still alive? Has Kyungsoo finally managed to kill you? You’ve been MIA for weeks!” Baekhyun not so subtly enquires over the phone, on a gray and muggy Monday morning much like the last, while Chanyeol ponders over his clothing choices for his coffee date.

“Ha ha, very funny. Nah, I’m living the dream.” On one hand there’s exercising his free will, variation, and wearing pants that actually flatter his non-existent butt. On the other, the one time he wore white it looked especially gruesome soaked in his blood. So. “Just because I disappear for a few days.”

“Two weeks! Two weeks of me enduring Jongdae’s whining about how you don’t love us anymore and don’t return our messages—okay fine, Jongdae’s also concerned about the whole band and the demo guides he sent you. And I’m really concerned about the integrity of my hearing.”

At the corner of Chanyeol’s vision he spots a black fuzzy shape curling up at one end of his cramped room-slash-studio. Almost feels that at the back of his throat like an itch that he coughs out. He puts on his darkest pair of jeans post-haste. Hat. Wallet. Sneakers.

It’s half past 9 am already.

“Why don’t we all go out for drinks and catch up? You can regale us all about your blossoming new love life and I’ll try not to vom. Heck, you can even bring Kyungsoo with you and I won’t embarrass you. Much,” Baekhyun says.

“Thanks. I appreciate your restraint.”

“Clear your Friday evening okay? Or I’ll send over a loop of Jongdae’s yelling.”

Something warm brushes by his calf when he goes out the door.

 

Chanyeol walks over to the coffee shop 20 minutes away from his place, hands deep in his pockets, taking a circuitous route. A grandma is tottering across the empty intersection with her shopping bags and Chanyeol swoops in to carry them for her (“Viva Polo’s boy,” she says, smiling up gratefully as he hands back her bags right at her doorstep, “be careful now and stop running all the time”). But Chanyeol is running, he thinks he’s late, yet always, always, even if he makes loops around the neighborhood, takes his time helping grandma with her bags, Chanyeol arrives at exactly 9:50 am, ten minutes before Kyungsoo does. Time is weird.

“You’re early,” Kyungsoo says as he stands up next to him in front of the pastry cases. Chanyeol’s feeling a predictable hankering for a muffin.

“Time is weird.”

“It is. You’re also wearing the same gray hoodie for a week straight. I wish you’d wear something else next time,” Kyungsoo observes, brushing off lint from Chanyeol’s shoulders. “Have you been taking in stray animals again?”

The muffins were a little dry last time, this time too no doubt, and tomorrow, and the day after. Chanyeol ends up ordering a donut to go with his iced coffee. Kyungsoo tugs at Chanyeol’s earlobes, smiling, and Chanyeol does not die from sheer happiness on the spot. Yet.

They go to their usual table, Kyungsoo bringing out his script for his impending audition later that afternoon, Chanyeol with his notebook to faux-write terrible lyrics that will get erased the next day. The donut tastes dry too. It figures.

Time check: 10:30 am.

“Hm? What?”

“You’ve been staring at my watch,” Kyungsoo says – and then stops, mug halfway to his mouth, his whole body becoming utterly still. He carefully sets his mug down. The look he’s fixing Chanyeol is laser-like in intensity; Chanyeol thinks he must’ve done something wrong if Kyungsoo’s trying to murder him with a glare.

“Ah, sorry,” Chanyeol apologizes for real as he lets go of Kyungsoo’s wrist.

“No, it’s-“ Kyungsoo is shaking his head and looks confused for a moment. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Busy thinking about me? You know, you could just ask me to come over and I could _take you to Hong Kong_.” Chanyeol waggles his eyebrows and enunciates the last few words as impossibly greasy as he can. Kyungsoo violently throws a sugar packet at his face.

Then it’s near noon. Precious little time left. They’re out on the street and on the way to his mom’s restaurant for a quick visit (“Let’s go to Viva Polo. Mom has been asking about you.”) but never actually getting there, the whole story of Chanyeol’s life really, when without warning Kyungsoo nudges at him, slips his goddamn hand over Chanyeol’s and threads their fucking fingers together like a true fucking romantic.

“Let’s eat at another restaurant instead,” Kyungsoo suggests in that low and smooth baritone of his, giving Chanyeol’s hand (might as well his heart too, what the hell) a firm sharp squeeze that makes his knees buckle. Chanyeol is so weak. Chanyeol is d-y-i-n-g.

Because the universe still has its timing down pat, at exactly 12:00 on the dot a black cat streaks across the street like a dark blur. Then a car shoots out of the corner of the previously empty intersection and plows right into Chanyeol’s pelvis. Fractures it. Sends the rest of his body—torso, shoulders, head— propelling forward to fatally smash against the car’s hood and windshield, crushing all the breath out of his chest. He’s cracked his clavicle. He can feel glass shards in his face, in his scalp. And then he breaks his head further open by tumbling down and head-butting the pavement like a champ.

Chanyeol can’t lift his head. Chanyeol can’t hear anything though he feels the aborted laughter bubbling in his crushed chest, can feel the smile stretch painfully across his scratched face even as he starts to lose consciousness, even as his blood spreads on the ground and stains the tip of Kyungsoo’s shoes—

He blinks.

It’s 6 am, on a gray and muggy Monday morning much like the last, his throat all scratchy as if he’s been swallowing gravel and sand the whole night though it doesn’t stop him from giggling out loud like a twelve year old.

It’s the first time Kyungsoo has ever held his hand.

 

**

 

If you think about it, what makes up a day in a life really? Sunrises and sunsets roughly at the same time each day. All those little habits. Routines. Chanyeol sitting in front of his synthesizer during the early hours of the morning and listening to the same looping track he’s been working on forever. A series of moments of being stuck, repeating, unable to move forward. Unable to move on.

(“Jongdae and I are worried about you. We haven’t heard from you in months. Talk to me, man,” Baekhyun says over the phone from some other time, like an old refrain yet different, and his throat closes up but he can’t remember why.)

Or is it about spending time interacting with people? Of chance encounters and fateful meetings? Like if Baekhyun hadn’t dragged his friend Kyungsoo one time in their composition class he wouldn’t have known him by name; he wouldn’t have asked him to sing the guide for one, two, three of his demos; wouldn’t be able to see the uncomposed way Kyungsoo laughs, face all scrunched up.

Like if on a rainy Monday night Chanyeol had ignored the wet dripping thing standing on his doorstep and didn’t want for anything, what would’ve happened then?

 

**

 

"Hm?"

Kyungsoo has been staring at him, Chanyeol realizes.

"Why don't we stay here for the day?" Kyungsoo says, a bit sudden given that he's just broken out his script and he hasn't taken a sip from his mug yet, his eyes boring on Chanyeol.

"What? Don't you have auditions later on?"

"I could skip it."

"Isn't that kind of important?"

Kyungsoo has turned his wrist palm side up to catch Chanyeol's drumming fingers on the table, considering them. "And this isn't?"

Someday Kyungsoo will be the death of him instead of maybe the dented hood of a stupid car because his heart is all set to explode now. They’re holding hands again. Yet there’s also the matter of the tightness around Kyungsoo’s mouth, the clamminess of his palms; he’s unused to it. "You'd go crazy from eating dry, sub-par sandwiches for lunch in this place.” 

"I think I've already gone crazy…anyway,” Kyungsoo falters, as if he found a strange new taste in his mouth and disagreed with it.

“You haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s just me then.” Kyungsoo rubs at his face and the soft amber lights of the coffee shop does nothing to downplay the shadows and hollows of his face. “But will you stay? Until just after lunch? I’m sorry I’m just feeling a little uneasy. And I don’t mind the sandwiches.”

“Hey, sure. No worries,” Chanyeol offers, though he’s pretty bad at keeping his promises at this point, half-curious as to how this Monday’s car crash would happen while he’s inside drinking coffee of all places. Maybe somebody’s kid with a toy car would chuck it at his head and brain him to death?

(Before noon Kyungsoo picks at the leftover sandwiches from their plates—yes, they were that dry and bad—and goes to feed them to the coffee shop’s resident cat sitting outside of the glass doors. While the black cat nibbles at the cold piece of ham, Chanyeol feels an uneasiness in his gut seeing Kyungsoo crouching there by himself on the sidewalk, like a terrible sense of déjà vu.

Chanyeol goes outside. The cat bolts.

And as the bumper of a speeding car slams into his legs and breaks them, the rest of his body following suit to crash on the hood, then dropping carelessly on the street, he thinks, Hello. Here we go again.)

 

**

 

Some say time flows in a single straight line, relentlessly pushing forward, no take-backs, no going back and changing elements. Like maybe when you’re playing a small gig with your best friends, trying to impress your new boyfriend, you go ahead and do this really cool guitar riff despite not warning anyone beforehand (and Jongdae looks at you and mouths “What the fuck” and isn’t that the most jarring thing of all). The guitar riff falls flat like a ton of bricks, but you continue playing and smiling your strained smile, because a dud is a dud and you can’t rewind and erase it.

What if time, let’s say a day, is made up of layers like a song that you can go back to given the right equipment. You still need to build up the track from its core melody, you can’t entirely change the chords, but you can tweak tempo and pitch. Swap instruments. Cut and paste. Substitute, substitute, substitute.

 

**

 

“—Are you still alive? Has Kyungsoo finally managed to—” Baekhyun blubbers wetly in the sink where Chanyeol dropped his phone, trying to multitask and brush his teeth while answering a call at the same time.

“Sorry buddy,” he says just as said phone shorts out in the water. So no phone today then. Well, variety is the spice of a looping life and he’ll take it.

(He’d taken a good look in the bathroom mirror, thought he saw his bloody face and half of his skull caved in. He looked down at his hands and they were nothing but crushed fingers and broken bones.)

He grabs his hat. Wallet. Sneakers. Something warm brushes by his calf when he goes out the door.

Chanyeol takes a different circuitous route to the coffee shop, a narrower alley, because random passing cars has been making him extremely jumpy these past few loops. The same grandma totters by and crosses the empty intersection, carrying her heavy shopping bags. Chanyeol helps her. (“Viva Polo’s boy,” she says, smiling up gratefully when he sets her shopping in front of her doorstep. “Be careful now. You’ve let in something dangerous inside your house, haven’t you?”). Chanyeol doesn’t understand what she’s saying. He’s running late, he thinks. But lo, he arrives at 9:50 am on the dot, variation in routines be damned.

Kyungsoo doesn’t comment on his punctuality or even at the state of his gray hoodie when he arrives. He just stares grimly at the pastry cases like he’s aware that both dry muffins and drier donuts are poor choices for a delicious breakfast.

“You didn’t get any of my calls or messages?” Kyungsoo asks, not looking at him.

"I dropped my phone in the bathroom this morning," Chanyeol says. “Was there something you wanted?”

Kyungsoo nods or shakes his head, Chanyeol can’t tell from his profile. “Let’s get the coffee and then go.”

Chanyeol opens his mouth, but Kyungsoo reaches up to tug Chanyeol’s ear with such a pleading look on his face that Chanyeol decides not to ask more questions for now. They wait in silence. They grab their drinks. He follows Kyungsoo out of the coffee shop with neither muffins nor donuts at hand. A black cat sits at the corner of the street, licking its paws.

He doesn’t enjoy it when Kyungsoo gets like this, all scrunched inwards, a hard tight knot of unspeakable nerves, like a touch might set him off. It’s already half past ten. Precious little time left.

“Let’s go to Viva Polo,” Chanyeol finds himself saying.

“No!”

“Okay.”

“I mean, sorry. I’m just-” Kyungsoo finally turns his head up at him, looking like he hadn’t slept in weeks; he slips his hand over Chanyeol’s and threads their fingers together like he’s afraid that Chanyeol would disappear. “I’ve been having bad dreams.”

They don’t go to Viva Polo. Instead, Kyungsoo leads him to an unoccupied bench in the park, overlooking a patch of greenery and the park’s bike lane. Kyungsoo brings out his dog-eared script for an audition later that afternoon while Chanyeol concentrates on crossing out the same trite lyrics in his notebook.

“Sometimes,” he starts, then pauses until he’s got Chanyeol’s attention, “Sometimes, doesn’t it feel like these things have happened before? That I’m spouting the same old lines of conversation. That I’ve read this particular script many times. That I’ve been here in the same bench with you.”

“Déjà vu?” Chanyeol asks. Truth be told Kyungsoo hasn’t brought him here before. Or has he? Too many concussions can do that to you.

“No, not déjà vu. Stuff keeps repeating. Like you keep having the same dream. ”            

Chanyeol closes his notebook and swears he sees droplets of his own blood fall onto its front cover. When he blinks the stains disappear.

Chanyeol grins. “So you’re saying you’ve been dreaming about me? Do these dreams get down and dirty?” Kyungsoo violently slaps his arm with his copy of the script.

“That’s not what I’m saying! Why are you like this?” There’s a surprised smile on Kyungsoo’s face and that’s better. The tension is bleeding out of his shoulders, looking more relieved with each passing minute being surrounded by this peaceful bit of nature.

(It still happens anyway at the drop of 12:00, it’s almost laughable:

Chanyeol bending down to tie his shoelace in the middle of the bike lane, and when he gets up there’s a motorcycle speeding through, fast, crashing straight into him. Dislocates his left shoulder. His arm bending at an unlikely angle. His head strikes the pavement. Hard. In his graying vision he sees a black cat sitting next to him lift its hind leg and start to lick its own balls clean.)

 

**

 

There’s normal dying days and then there’s the dark days, when even blinking awake at 6 am, gravel and sand in his throat, the prospect of dating Kyungsoo and holding his hand seems like a faraway consolation. On those days he spends a few more hours in bed, shuts his eyes so tightly he can see sparks behind his eyelids, forces his mind into a blank slate. There are no text messages to Kyungsoo. No ringing phone to answer. He can ignore the heavy purring weight on his chest. And for a while it’s as if his day is filled with possibilities, infinite and endless.

(A black car making a quick turn cripples him in the knees and runs him over. An SUV, beating the red light, renders him airborne for one blissful moment. That swerving car again. A black cat. Chanyeol cracks the back of his head on a sharp jutting rock and while the blood dribbles in generous dollops down the pavement he thinks he sees Kyungsoo’s anguished face above him, screaming, _stop dying you bastard_ , as he puts pressure on Chanyeol’s head to try and staunch the bleeding.)

Dark days. Very dark days. Chanyeol answers his phone before it lets out a terrifying peal to shatter the quiet of his room.

“—how’s it going? Are you still alive?” Baekhyun asks. Chanyeol stares at the ceiling. Then he gets up, filled with a bad sense of premonition, because you can only tinker with the layers so much before it falls into chaos and noise, and he’s got a date to go to.

 

**

 

He takes a circuitous route to the coffee shop 20 minutes away from his place. A grandma is tottering by with her heavy shopping bags, crossing the empty intersection. Chanyeol swoops in to help her. (“Viva Polo’s boy,” she says, patting his cheek, her smile a little sad as he puts her shopping down in front of her doorstep, “Be careful now, you poor, poor thing.”)

Chanyeol doesn’t even make it inside the coffee shop this time. Kyungsoo is out in front, waiting for him.

“You’re early,” is all Chanyeol gets out before he’s being dragged—away from the coffee shop, from Viva Polo, away from the park bench and its cursed bike lanes. “Hey, hey, hey, where are we going? I thought you wanted coffee.”

Kyungsoo looks especially wan, his hair just on this side of disheveled, tension around his chewed out, bloodless mouth. His grip is tight around Chanyeol’s wrist like he’s afraid Chanyeol might escape. “I don’t fucking know. Perhaps you can tell me.”

A tight knot of nerves. If Chanyeol digs his heels in he might trigger something. “Um, okay.” He lets himself be dragged, looking around: they’re some distance away from the intersection, quiet neighborhood, directly in front of them is a small empty square populated by swings, slides, monkey bars. “The playground? I doubt they sell coffee though.”

"Do you think," Kyungsoo starts, unsmiling, still not facing Chanyeol, "a car could get through here?"

There’s a sharp chill up his spine even in this warm weather. "I don’t think so? The streets are a bit narrow. Kyungsoo, what’s wrong?”

“How many times has this Monday repeated for you, Park Chanyeol?” The grip tightens on his wrist. “Five? Ten? For the longest time I thought this was all just a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from and I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Every day, every morning, we meet at the coffee shop, we date, you tell me those awful jokes, and then you go ahead and die. You die in front of me and I can’t do anything about it. Every day you fucking die, every day I have to stay with your body and tell the bad news to your mother and sister over and over-“  

Chanyeol tries to tug back his hand, the ice-cold chill spreading through his chest, reaching his heart. “Kyungsoo, I can explain.“

“I tried to warn you off. I tried to protect you. And when you just keep on dying I figured it was either stupidity or something deliberate.”

“Kyungsoo, look at me!”

Kyungsoo twists away and shoves him back, putting space between them. “How many repeats! Twenty? Fifty times? A hundred??”

Chanyeol falls back on the empty swings more from surprise, the sounds of chains loud in his ears. He lands on the dusty ground.

“I...don’t know. How many times it has been.” He lost count many cycles ago. Now it’s Chanyeol who can’t bear to look up at the ugly expression on Kyungsoo’s face.

“Is this some sort of a game to you.” By all appearances Kyungsoo is ready to take him down further and pummel him, his footsteps heavy as he stands over Chanyeol. Although Chanyeol has the advantage of size, Kyungsoo is scrappy and determined.  “Dying then smiling in the morning like nothing happened. Do you want to die that much?”

Yet when Kyungsoo falls on his knees, hovering over Chanyeol, he doesn’t pummel him. His hands are gentle as they settle over Chanyeol’s shoulders, and Chanyeol is forced to see, forced to recognize (there’s his own blood dripping over him, no, it’s someone else’s blood, no it’s-) Kyungsoo’s falling tears.

His heart hurts.

“Why can’t you let me save you?” Kyungsoo asks. “You could’ve told me. We could’ve worked together earlier to get out of this. Talked to our friends for help. Do you think we enjoy seeing you get stuck like this?”   

Chanyeol reaches up to wipe Kyungsoo’s wet cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to involve anyone.”

There’s a soft mewl in the background. Like that of a cat.

Kyungsoo sits up, alert. “It’s that creature, isn’t it? It’s causing this.”

That horrible premonition flaring in his gut, strong and burning. He grabs Kyungsoo’s forearm. “No, leave it alone. Let me handle this.”

But there’s a new tension in Kyungsoo’s shoulders now and he swiftly gets to his feet, not taking his eyes off at some fixed point over Chanyeol’s head. “It’s not just a black cat. It’s been there every single instance you’ve died.” He bends over to pick up something on the ground, and before Chanyeol can stop him, he throws it at full force.

The cat yowls in pain. Kyungsoo gives chase.

“No! Come back! Kyungsoo!” Too many layers. Too much tinkering with the loop. Chanyeol stands up. He’s losing sight of the limping black cat and Kyungsoo as they run out of the playground and onto the narrow streets. Losing track of time.

“Got him!” Kyungsoo shouts.

Chanyeol hears rather than sees the approaching car, the sharp squeal of its tires ringing like audio feedback in his ears, the dull thud as it hits Kyungsoo and thrusts his body into the pavement, limp as a ragdoll.

Chaos.

Noise.

 

**

 

Kyungsoo tries to lift his head, his mouth moving slow. Chanyeol kneels closer by his side. His fucking phone isn’t connecting to emergency services.

“It’s over, right?” Kyungsoo gives him a bloodstained smile. “I saved you this time.“

“Shut up. It’s going to be fine, okay? Help is coming.”

Kyungsoo cheerfully gurgles up blood at him. Then his eyes close.

It occurs to Chanyeol—when he slips a shaking hand underneath Kyungsoo for support, the movement almost familiar as blood seeps into the sleeves of his gray hoodie, the way he feels sticky fluid at the dent in Kyungsoo’s skull and, oh god, please, anyone, no, not this, it wasn’t supposed to be him, no, no, no—that this has happened before.

 

**

 

How many times have they ended up saving each other's lives?

 

**

 

Kyungsoo wakes up with a start. His phone tells him it's six in the morning, on a Monday. There's a missed call and a text from Chanyeol, reminding him about their coffee date.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Remix of chapter 8 of Descry. Title from Andrew Bird's TED talk. Edit: Now that reveals has come and gone, thanks are in order! Many thanks to Isa for brainstorming support and handholding, who endured sad and sadder plot developments, who also linked me a time-loopy music vid so I can have a structure to hang on for this fic, and commiserated as I retraumatized myself with Puella Mahou Magica Madoka "for research" purposes (no really thank you omg). I am also deeply indebted to Tanya who is in no way related to fandom but is a gungho supporter of My Passions (tm), also for her help with brainstorming, for the nuanced trauma conversations, and just for overall confidence-boosting convos. You're a gem! <3


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